Gain Communication Skills: Video Transcript

David Groff(BS Mathematics and Statistics, Miami, 1991) [heads the pricing analytics department at Cincinnati Insurance]: The actuarial career was something that I found out about in my sophomore year at Miami. It was very applied math, applied statistics; they were solving business problems, and that was definitely was more way up my alley for what I wanted to do with my math skills. So the actuarial career is a career that has a lot of technical skills needed, is exposed to the business skillset, you're doing real-world work, and it is constantly ranked as one of the top 10 jobs and careers to have in America. Anybody that has math and statistics skills, I think, should consider it. It's a sought-after, in-demand career because there is a supply-and-demand problem of people that can do math and statistics, that can work in business, and can take these exams and pass them, and that supply-and-demand problem creates a good career for anybody looking to go into it.

In the Mathematics and Statistics major, you can also concentrate on actuarial science. I tell people now that I don't think you should get that specific; it gets to having too much knowledge but not wide enough knowledge. So the more exposure to all kinds of areas, that could still be technical, but there is more understanding across the spectrum. That is definitely what they want to concentrate on in my opinion. The other thing is the communication. The communication skillset is something we look for a lot in our recruits. It is maybe harder to find somebody that can communicate well in these, I would say, STEM-type majors, math and statistics.

Miami, definitely when we talk to those people graduating, they have classes where they've had these team projects and that really gets them exposed to real-world projects that are going to happen on the job. Even beyond that, to be able to talk to non-technical people about technical subjects, that is a skillset that everybody that's going to be hiring math and statistics majors…That will easily come through in an interview. Those are the types of skillsets that everybody's looking for and that would be something that everybody should be striving to get exposure to and to acquire.

Academic Advising

Academic Advising in the College of Arts and Science, Miami University, Oxford, OH, helps students make decisions about majors, minors, and thematic sequences; monitors student academic progress; and provides assistance with course planning.